Physicians, physical therapists, chiropractors, sports trainers, massage therapists and many others often provide massage therapy to patients, athletes or clients. In addition, massages and cold therapy are often given by people with no special training in homes by family members or others. Often heat or cold therapy is combined with the massage to soothe or stimulate muscles. In addition to heat and/or cold therapy, different types of massage techniques may be used. For instance, targeted pressure therapy may be used to provide a pinpoint muscle massage to a certain spot in a muscle group. In other cases a more broad based “kneading” type massage is needed.
In order to impart cold therapy with the targeted pressure type massage, therapists and others would often encase water in a small vessel, insert a stick or similar handle implement, and then freeze the water. The result was a POPSICLE™ like configuration. The frozen water mass on the end of the handle implement was used to massage particular points on a person's body. Massages using this technique could be messy. As the person's body heat and the ambient temperature melted the ice, water would drip over the person and potentially on to the table, bed or floor around where the massage was being administered.
For kneading type massages, ice packs or ice cubes could be used to assist with these types of massages, but these could be messy and inconvenient. In addition, massaging over an ice pack does not provide the direct cold treatment that may be needed.